The Moments In Between
by NeuroticMuse413
Summary: A series of short stories about what happened to Clara and the Doctor between episodes as they both try to get accustomed to his new, older face and solve the mystery of the chalk. Updated as the new episodes air.


**The Moments In Between**

_By NeuroticMuse413_

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**SUMMARY:** A series of short stories about what happened to Clara and the Doctor between episodes as they both try to get accustomed to his new, older face and solve the mystery of the chalk. Updated as the new episodes air.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own Doctor Who. If I did, I'd never let him leave the TARDIS.

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The Doctor took in the three other occupied tables at the Glasgow café. There was a couple, obviously on their first date by the jittery way their knees bounced. A father sat by the counter with his plain, plastic stroller and what looked like a nine-month-old. It was quiet. The Doctor thanked whatever local deity patrolled the area for the baby's silence. He didn't know what this new face of his might do before a screaming baby. The last table by the window held an old fashioned writer type, a simple girl with glasses and colorful, modern garb.

He hadn't seen a pen in a few hundred years. Or yesterday. He wasn't sure.

They all fit in to their surroundings, all colorful and tired by their everyday lives. He was a stranger to time and to himself and even Clara, born to the age, suddenly seemed _wrong_.

He glanced over to her. She tapped on the screen of her phone absentmindedly. He could only figure she was keeping it within reach should her Doctor call again. Her felt his eyebrows gather together furiously but the feeling quickly passed. He felt like he had bricks over his eyes.

There was a void where his feelings for Clara had once been. He did an inventory of his feelings and memories. Rose. She was the first he checked for and she was still there. Martha was floating in the distance as always and the memory of Donna still made him want to cry. The rest were there too, from before. They felt swallowed up into the fog before the war but they were ever-present.

What he saw in Clara once, the curiosity he had, was gone though. There was only a feeling of gratitude and familiarity as if she had been with him forever, a constant. He smirked for a split second but let his lips fall into his usual scowl as soon as her eyes dashed his way.

He focused on her features, trying to figure out what she was thinking by the way she drummed her fingers on the phone or hunched over. She was either still guarded or just a victim of 21st century posture. She also couldn't look at him for longer than a few minutes.

Meanwhile, Clara felt like she was in an interrogation room, waiting for him to ask his questions. She reminded herself that of course he wouldn't have any questions. This wasn't an interview. He had all the same memories of her Doctor. It's not like she had to tell him the details of their life together, of all the running and screaming and aliens and such. He had been there. He remembered. She almost wished he didn't remember so she could more easily accept the passing of her Doctor.

She had pretended that the gray-haired blur in her peripheral vision held the same voice as the man who had just wished her well on the phone but it only lasted a minute. The feeling of loss quickly returned. It didn't help that he wasn't talking or drinking or acting very much alive. Her Doctor had been so very full of life and energy.

Still, she tried to make the time a little less awkward.

"What'cha thinking about, then?" she timidly asked. She didn't remember ever being timid but the situation called for it. There was a wall of ice between them and she had to carefully chisel it away, not break out the napalm.

"Lots of things," he answered. He seemed suddenly aware of his staring and tried to survey the room again. "Honestly, I'm just making sure none of these people are robots or aliens or shadow spiders from Haturka or robot alien spiders."

"They're not," she answered.

"How do _you_ know? They all look dodgy."

"They're Scottish. They just always look like that."

She laughed at her own joke and took a sip of her coffee. He didn't get it. She suddenly noticed how small the tables in the café were. They were almost romantic and he was very, very close for a stranger.

The Doctor had become aware of this as soon as they entered the shop and had hoped to avoid that sort of atmosphere should it make her uncomfortable. He didn't mind it, himself. He felt her far and close at the same time which was an intriguing feeling.

Silence fell over them again. He cleared his throat and stiffened up, turning his back into a straight line.

She looked him over, glad to have received his invitation to do so a few moments prior by the TARDIS. She knew he genuinely hoped she would accept him and would give her every opportunity possible to make it work. She wondered how hard it was to train new companions.

"Will you be doing that a lot from now on?" he asked. He took out a long, wrinkly finger and swirled the air in front of her face.

She jerked back defensively. "You said to look at you!"

"Well, it was more of a metaphor and it does see m to be making you a bit pale."

"No, no…" she lied, flimsily.

He sighed and sat back a little, giving her a little more space. "Talk to me," he reluctantly offered. "Get it out. Ask your weird humanly questions. Won't scare me away, probably."

She cleared her throat and took another sip of coffee to buy time. "So, this new face—"

"Yesssss," he urged, growing impatient. "I'm not getting any younger, here."

"I know there are a lot of different versions of you around. You ever run into them?"

He quickly spat out, "Next question!"

"Why? What was wrong with that one?"

"You just want to know if you'll accidentally run into your Doctor again while we're out gallivanting through the universe. I feel practically cheated on. No point taking you out if you're going to be distracted looking for your ex."

She laughed at the way his new accent changed when he got emotional.

"That's not why I asked. Okay, that's entirely why I asked. Sorry."

He crossed his arms, feigning offense. He made a waving gesture, urging her to go on.

"Is every part of you different? Like, _every_ part? Because I got acquainted with your part at Christmas and I'd like to make and assessment. Where do these parts come from anyway and can you pick and choose? Does the TARDIS pick it for you? She would, that bitch. She's never liked me." She took a deep breath and kept on. "When you said you weren't my boyfriend and that it wasn't my mistake to make, whose mistake was it? Does that mean the old you fancied me before you changed and now you don't care the same way anymore?"

His heavy eyebrows reached his hairline. "Bloody hell. Is this what it's like inside a girl's mind all the time?"

She ignored him but slowed down. "I mean, not that I exactly want to recapture any of that or anything. Not that there was anything to recapture. Just wondering. I understand new body parts but if your memories are the same, how come you don't feel the same anymore."

"I didn't say that. I just know—I know I'm not him anymore. I've just changed."

"But I haven't," she whispered, suddenly out of breath again but with little urge to breath deep. "You're not my boyfriend, you never were, but you can't blame a girl for feeling broken up with."

"I know," he answered.

She crossed her ankles and arms, mimicking him, and sat back in her uncomfortable metal chair. She reached over and held his hand, trying to appear as clinical as possible. He didn't pull away, exactly, but he seemed as comfortable as her chair. "Don't want you to think this means anything but can I just hold your hand for a bit?"

She closed her eyes and thought of her young Doctor, holding her hand and pulling as they ran. Those moments and those emotions had been imprinted into her delicate hands. She tried to replace those soft hands with these wrinkly old things, but remembering all the good. His hands were just too thin and she could feel his fast heartbeat in his veins. Two hearts. Yes, it was still the same man.

She shut her eyes tighter, trying to connect the feelings further.

When she opened her eyes, she realized his large buggy eyes were fixed on hers as if she'd started singing an opera in the middle of the café. His eyebrows had turned into two gray caterpillars trying to eat each other.

"I'm just going to pretend you know what you're doing," said the Doctor.

"Dammit, do you want me to get used to this or not?"

"I'm not him!" he shouted as if she were thick. "Not your boyfriend!"

"You just said you _were_ him!" He pulled his hand away and stood up, as offended as he'd seemed just outside the TARDIS. She smirked. "Did that make you uncomfortable?"

He shook his head but his fists lay stiffly at his sides. He sat down again and returned his hand to the table, welcoming her to take it again. It felt like a silent, "Do what you will."

She rested her hand by his but didn't take it.

"I have one more question," said Clara. "Where do we go next?"

A glimmer of her Doctor returned to his eyes. Adventure was the one thing he could never change, his drug of choice. His comfort food. And now, it was hers too. It was a comfort stronger than anything she had felt for her Doctor. And it started to sink in, the feeling that nothing had changed so long as her world kept changing every day.

He rambled on a line of words that made no sense, all foreign names or places that wouldn't exist for centuries. He stood up and offered his hand again in mid-air, this time begging her to take it.

_Adrenaline fixes everything_, they both thought.

On their way out, the Doctor stopped dead in his tracks and grabbed a piece of chalk off the blackboard at the door. He stopped them again and slowly turned back around. He couldn't read the scribbles on the board, as if a warning written for someone else. He just knew he'd figure it out one day so he paid no mind for now but kept the chalk and went on his way.

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**AUTHOR NOTES:** The new Peter Capaldi Doctor has me inspired to write. I've read all your reviews during my long hiatus. I promise to try to write in some of my older stories as well. This was just the giddy fangirl in me, begging to remember who I once was.

_**Reviews are better than the red lining on the Doctor's new coat. **_


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